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CCA visiting artist Don Friedlich participated as an artist in residence in spring 2012. He had been invited on behalf of the college's Glass and Jewelry / Metal Arts Programs. While at CCA Friedlich experimented with glass processes and worked directly with students.

Artist's Techniques

Metal arts and glass are ancient mediums, and while Friedlich is a craftsman in the traditional sense, he also incorporates new industrial technologies in his work.

Scott Benefield came to CCA in fall 2011, visiting with students in the Glass Studio on the Oakland campus for a lecture and demonstration. Benefield owns Isola Glass in Camano Island, Washington, and is a partner of BTU Studio in Randalstown, Northern Ireland.

Artist in Resident

Innovative Approach

Although metal arts and glass are ancient arts, Friedlich applies new and innovative industrial technologies in his work. While at CCA Friedlich brought CNC-milled graphite molds into the Hot Shop where Glass 2 students helped him fill them with hot glass. He also brought in 3D-printed vitrious objects, which he fired enamel colors onto, and he CNC-milled a plaster blow mold using the CCA shops.

With more than 230 of the top contemporary jewelry, clothing, furniture, and home-decor artists from across the country, this is the largest juried craft show west of the Rockies, providing an unparalleled opportunity for students to exhibit their fine art and functional craft works in a high-profile venue.

On February 4, 2012, the faculty at California College of the Arts gathered at the college's San Francisco campus for a retreat focused on the state of the arts across our many disciplines. In the morning, 25 short presentations offered insights into challenges and opportunities faced by practitioners and thinkers in recent times. The word aired most frequently was crisis: the crisis of the Great Recession; the crisis of Global Climate Change; the crisis of understanding and working within a discipline in our digital age.

The economic downturn has produced an economic squeeze within most of our disciplines. Art directors, as Alexis Mahrus remarks, have diminished roles in shaping an illustration. Smaller profit margins reduce the flexibility and time given over to experimentation. Branding and celebrity worship take up a larger slice of the creative pie. Some presenters, like Sue Redding of Industrial Design, see no problem in this conflation of art and business and, furthermore, dispute the notion of a crisis. Yet many presenters feel that the economic crisis is not only real but wielding dangerously asymmetrical impacts. Demand remains strong for high-end craft goods and blue-chip fine art. Some small nonprofits are struggling to survive. To Ignacio Valero of Critical Studies, the priority given over to luxury items can be attributed to the ongoing influence of classical economic policies that privilege individual decision making over collective social and natural needs. Likewise, Sandra Vivanco of Diversity Studies notes that economic inequalities have greatly worsened over the past few years, especially in the developing world. Contemporary society is forging a timeless, spaceless way of conducting business, a race for lucrative and short-term gains that concentrates investment more than ever in the hands of a few.

Jonah Ward (Glass 2006) makes his work with molten glass . . . but the glass is absent in the finished pieces. With deft movements he pours the material onto wood panels laid out horizontally on the floor, creating a crystalline tracery. "People are always asking me if Jackson Pollock is my favorite painter," he quips. There's definitely some logic to the comparison: the substrate laid flat, the artist standing above, crouching and extending his arms in sweeping motions. Ward's movements are more like those of someone spreading honey from a dipper on (giant) morning toast, though, and necessarily involve a great deal less spattering and flinging. In the end he removes the solidified glass from the wood, and the burnt patterns left behind constitute the artwork in its final form: ready like a palimpsest, with shadows that trace of the nimble choreography of the artist's actions.

"I entered CCA as a Painting/Drawing major, but switched to Glass partway through," Ward explains. Although, in a way, he has come full-circle by returning to work that is essentially a kind of drawing. Solo exhibitions at the cool new San Francisco gallery 12 Gallagher Lane and a flurry of media attention attests to the appeal of his unique approach.

We invite you to learn more about the following alumni of CCA's Glass Program by visiting the websites listed below to review their current work, see what projects or events are coming up, read about past accomplishments, and learn how CCA shaped their vision as artists.

Graduates leave CCA with the ability to realize their most adventurous ideas and the motivation to make a positive impact on the world -- ready to succeed in studio practice, the professional workplace, or a top-tier graduate program.

Adam Green's (Sculpture 2010) current summer job with AmeriCorps, teaching high-risk youth, represents for him a creative coming of age. "I guess you could have considered me a high-risk youth. I was sent to a military academy in Georgia for part of high school." In AmeriCorps' program in Providence, Rhode Island, Green is involved on the administrative side and is also teaching drawing, sculpture, and glassblowing.

The medium of glass was Green's own artistic liberation. "Working with glass takes intense focus. There's a huge learning curve, and a lot of failure. Making a perfect cup is like chasing a dragon. You have this balance between an unreachable goal and a meditative exercise. It's physically intense, and also cathartic. And when it works, it's extremely gratifying."

The quest to create order from chaos is a touchstone in Green's personal fine art practice. His Rocket Grids depict unfurling orthogonal patterns of spaceships, arrayed almost like windows in a skyscraper. Why rockets? "I've always built rockets: from latex, milk, rubber, or wax. As a kid, I was always more interested in science than art. I had a computer at a really young age and loved to take it apart and look at the circuit boards. The grid format is a natural for me in terms of classification, lists, and free association. To me, rockets represent a fantastic metaphor for manhood. NASA in particular is this gigantic phallus-obsessed institution, focused primarily on penetrating the atmosphere. All those failed test flights in the 1950s and 1960s are a huge inspiration for my work. They represented to me an erectile dysfunction in American society. My Rocket Boy costume, this ridiculous red and yellow rocket rig, uses humor to lower viewers' defenses. It's a self-portrait without being too serious."

James McLeod works with Hebron glass masters at the al-Natsheh factory

Among the many destructive effects of the current political discord in the Middle East is the disruption of ancient local glassmaking traditions. CCA alumnus James McLeod (Glass 2002) experienced firsthand the precariousness of this rich thread of knowledge during a 2007 trip to Istanbul to teach a glassblowing workshop. Upon his return he was committed to founding Floating World Projects. The project is dedicated to transcending cultural stereotypes and prejudices via arts education and artistic collaboration.